Beyond the Sea

SINGLE REVIEW
ZARD - Tsubasa wo Hirogete /
        Ai wa Kurayami no Naka de

1. Tsubasa wo Hirogete
2. Ai wa Kurayami no Naka de
3. Tsubasa wo Hirogete (Instrumental)
4. Ai wa Kurayami no Naka de (Instrumental)

This is ZARD’s 44th single and it was released on April 9, 2008. This single reached #3 on the Oricon Weekly Charts and it has sold 62,006 copies. The first track was used as the theme song for the 12th Detective Conan movie and the 2nd track was the 22nd opening theme song for the Detective Conan anime.

Izumi Sakai originally wrote Tsubasa wo Hirogete for the group DEEN way back in 1993 and she recorded her own version of it as well. Unlike the other songs that she has written for other artists and self-covered, this one never got officially released until now. I assume that Sakai recorded Tsubasa wo Hirogete during the early 90s because her vocals sound a little younger and the music has the classic flair of a 90s J-pop ballad. The beginning of the song features calm piano chords and later on percussion and electric guitar come in. To top it all off, there’s that electric guitar solo.

The 2nd track is a new version of Ai wa Kurayami no Naka de, the B-side from ZARD’s debut single Good-bye My Loneliness released in 1991. With a more aggressive arrangement and louder instruments, the music was pretty good. However, what killed this song for me was the artist who was featured in it and that happens to be alternative/rock artist Aya Kamiki. Mixing Sakai’s original 1991 vocals with new vocals was a bad idea and the resulting “duet” turned out to sound like bad karaoke to me. I mean, why is Kamiki even on here? If it was trying to make the song sound more modern, then that was dumb because this is classic ZARD we’re talking about. I could hardly hear Sakai anyway because she was being drowned out by Kamiki’s overbearing vocals.

Overall Rating

3 stars